Dear VK Issue No. 5

Know what’s more frustrating than being without a computer when 99% of your home- and worklives involve being online? Nothing. After three eons weeks offline, I’m pleased to be back with Dear VK, Issue Number 5. This week’s column is all about non-committal, nympho, needy or nagging women: how to handle them, how to land them, or how to kill them without getting caught. (Ok, I’m just kidding about that last part.)

However, due to the graphic nature of some of the questions (and my response), please don’t read the remainder of the column if you’re easily offended. The rest of you may consider yourself warned.

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Player or Playmate?

Dear VK,

I’m recently divorced and have been out of the dating game for some quite some time. Four months ago I started dating a wonderful woman I met through Match.com, but I think there may be an issue brewing and I could use some advice.

We have become very intimate our relationship. Since we are both professionals in our late 40’s we can only get together two or three times a week. We pretty much have a standard routine now. On Wednesdays, we have a nice dinner and some small talk then watch LOST on TV. By the end of LOST she is basically ripping my clothes off and we study the Wizbang theory. Saturday is afternoon tennis or a workout, followed with dinner and dancing or a movie, then more of the Wizbang theory before we turn in together. There’s more Wizbang in the morning, then I fix breakfast and we share a workout, movie, etc and before returning home for Desperate Housewives or Grey’s Anatomy. Of course, normally she is ripping my clothes off again, before the show’s over, but I’m gently shown the door after-wards until Wednesday.

The sex is great. In fact, I have had more fun lately than in the last 5 years of my marriage, but I think I’m one of her boy toys. She still has her profile up on Match.com and I assume is looking for something better or waiting until she tires of me. VK, what do you think? Enjoy the ride or ask her to get serious?

Thanks,

Old Boy Toy

Dear Boy Toy,

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: she’s wonderful, you’re getting laid regularly, you still have your own place where you can burp and fart and do all that other guy stuff, she’s not demanding any kind of commitment… and you’re not high-fiving all your pals for having found exactly what so many guys dream about?

Damn. Where were you when I was single??!

But seriously, it sounds as if you’re simply uncertain about your significance in her life. Coming out of a divorce so recently, perhaps part of you is afraid to get involved in another relationship where the emotional attachment is out of balance. In highly technical terms, that’s known as being “gun-shy,” and it’s a perfectly acceptable way to feel… provided you’re aware of it and equally aware that some people take longer than 4 months to decide if they’ve met Mr./Ms. Right.

The fact that the two of you are seeing each other on a regular basis — and that she’s spending her Saturday nights with you, as well as most of Sunday — makes me think she’s giving you all the free time she can spare right now. You didn’t indicate whether she’s also recently divorced and, if so, perhaps she wants to take things slowly? Or maybe she’s a smart cookie that doesn’t want to risk scaring you away, so she’s willing to bide her time and wait for you to make the next step toward a more significant relationship.

Having said that, if you want more certainty — and exclusivity — then sit down with Ms. Wonderful and talk about it. You may find out that she only left her profile up because she paid for that 6-month subscription, or maybe she forgot about it… or maybe you’re right and she’s still shopping around. You won’t know unless you ask, but you’d better be prepared for the answer, too.

Either way, best of luck to you. Please be sure to let me know how it all works out!

Mated for life, VK

Girl’s Gotta Have It

Dear VK,

So I’m with Sweetie and we’re enjoying some cuddling… with fingers involved. I found a few magic spots and the results were fantastic. Just as one spot brought her to climax, I’d switch to another and when that one maxed out, to another, and so on. This went on for 20-30 minutes in which she was repeatedly climaxing with not more than 5-10 seconds between each. It just kept going on, and I was loving it. But then she gets to the point when we’re done when she’s not exactly dizzy but still a little light-headed.

Now, she says she keeps thinking about it, even dreaming about it, and waking up from what guys call “wet dreams.” A few times she’s even climaxed when I’ve rubbed little circles with my fingertip on her shoulder. Once she even climaxed while I was simply talking to her, describing how she’d feel if we were actually messing around, etc.

She wants to know how I’m doing that to her. Hell, I want to know, too! As I write this, it seems like during the first encounters — maybe when she was dizzy — she was somehow hypnotized or somehow got susceptible to mental suggestion and stimulation.

I know I’m not a hot shot loverboy. Things were going ok in the bedroom, but this experience from 2 weeks ago seemed to come from out of the blue and we’ve been spectacular ever since. Have you heard of anything like this? What’s going on? For some reason, she’s a bit hesitant to ask her girlfriends about the whole thing. So any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely, Digital Dynamo

Assuming (despite my deeply ingrained skepticism) that your girlfriend really is having oodles of orgasms after you’ve just barely lifted a fingertip, I fully understand why she wouldn’t want to advertise your abilities to her girlfriends.

However, as I mentioned, I’m skeptical. Deeply skeptical. Maybe it’s because married women my age typically have to time their orgasms to coincide with commercial breaks on TV. Or maybe it’s because I’m usually the one who’s too tired to lift more than a finger. Or maybe it’s because I’m fully aware that the female orgasm can be such an elusive, difficult thing to pull off that “sexperts” have made fortunes generating millions of magazine articles, self-help books, sex toys and herbal supplements promising to help a woman achieve just one orgasm.

Or maybe — just maybe — it’s because I remember being single and B.S.’ing boyfriends into believing their fingers tripped my light fantastic so they’d be so ego-stoked that I didn’t have to return the favor. Which reminds me: what has she done for you lately?

Now, suspending my disbelief once again, let me repeat something my auto mechanic once told me: if your car’s working fine, why go poking around under the hood when the chances are good you’ll just screw things up?

Meanwhile, if you’ll pardon me, I think I’ll take a break for a daydream and a cigarette.

Phalanx for the phun, VK

All The World’s Her Stage

Dear VK,

I need help dealing with a drama queen at work – without doing 10-15 at the state prison. She has so much of her ego tied up in her work that if you disagree with her she is liable to run out of the room sobbing. She’s so anal-retentive that I frequently tell her that she should work for the IRS. I actually like her, I just hate working with her. Sounds nuts, right?

Since she is the administrative assistant for our work group, all paperwork is filtered through her so I can’t easily avoid dealing with her. Another problem is many of the rules that she so enjoys reminding us peasants of, don’t seem to apply her.

Is there a reasonable solution or should I break out that silenced Woodsman that my “uncle” willed me after his Watergate days.

Signed, Goin’ Krazy in Kennewick, WA

Dear Krazy,

The difference between a Drama Queen and a pain in the ass is that drama requires an audience. Take away the emotional thrill, the validation and the attention that specators provide and a Drama Queen loses her incentive to perform. A pain in the ass, however, remains a pain in the ass regardless of whether anyone else is around.

If the woman you just described were a Drama Queen she’d perform long soliloquies conveying the difficulties and travails she encountered and overcame to follow the same rules she expects you to follow. She’d bill herself as a martyr, an example, a role-model. The only way you’d be able to stop her would be if you walked out mid-performance after announcing that you’d already caught this show once before and don’t feel the need to waste time sitting through it again. After all, who wants to put on a performance when there’s nobody around to watch?

Unfortunately for you, the woman you write about isn’t a Drama Queen. She’s a pain in the ass. Worse yet, she’s a pain in the ass with power: she can enforce rules and handles your paperwork, which means you can’t do a damn thing about her behavior.

But since you’re close enough to joke about her anal-retentiveness, and since you actually like her, maybe you should consider talking with her away from the office about these things? A cup of coffee together (or three strong shots of tequilla each) might be the perfect opportunity to bring up your confusion over why it seems like she doesn’t follow the rules she imposes on you. Besides, if she’s so damn insecure that she breaks into tears at the office, perhaps feeling like she has a friend might just be sufficient to calmn her nit-picky ass down.

A Caustic Critic, VK

If She’s Told You Once…

Dear VK,

Years ago, I married a sweet and wonderful woman. Sometime in the past 12 years she’s turned into the world’s biggest nag. I don’t hear a “Good morning, dear” first thing anymore. Now it’s “Why didn’t you take the trash out last night?” When I come home from work it’s not “Hi, hon, how was your day?” Instead, she wants to know why I didn’t call to see if she needed me to pick something up on the way home. If I’m late due to traffic, she pounces on me with demands to know why I didn’t let her know I was going to be late — and clearly she wasn’t worried that something bad might’ve happened to me. Saturdays when I’m reading the paper or answering email she wants to know why I haven’t mowed the yard yet, and every time I watch sports on Sunday she’s there asking why I haven’t done this chore or that.

To be honest, I’m sick of it. I feel like a child who is being scolded all the time or, worse yet, like I’m living with my mother. I want the nagging to stop! What do I do?

Signed, Wishing I Was Deaf

Dear Deaf Dude,

So… why didn’t you take out the trash last night? Why didn’t you call to see if she needed you to pick up something, or to let her know you were going to be late? Why haven’t you mowed the yard or taken care of the things on your “Honey-Do” list? Hmmmmm???

See, there are two causes of nagging: people who feel they need to stay on top of others to make sure things are taken care of, and people who need to be stayed on top of or they’ll forget to take care of things. (Ok, maybe there’s a third cause: marriage… but that’s for another column.)

If your wife is telling you to do the same thing over and over, the best way to stop it is to do what she wants without being told. It’s not rocket-science: it’s part of that “work” involved in being married that everyone talks about when they say “Marriage is hard work.”

Of course, if she keeps nagging even after you’ve done those things you are perfectly entitled to call her a nag and tune her out. Just be sure you get the sequence right.

Personally Preferring Post-It Notes, VK

Note: When not dispensing advice here at Wizbang, Venomous Kate can be found at Electric Venom where she minds her own business instead of yours. Got a question or feedback for next week’s column? Send them in.

Your wife is almost certainly wondering what happened to the mature, responsible, hard-working, dependable, trustworthy, thoughtful man she married, and when the lazy, incompetent, surly lump who can’t handle so much as taking out the trash or calling when he’s running late took his place.

If you’re like my husband, you feel like you’re asserting your manhood by passive-agressively refusing to do the things that you DO in fact know you’re supposed to do and DO in fact remember to do; the result is that everyone who knows you sees you as totally UNmanly, because a man handles his business without being led by the hand by his wife like a little child needs to be to do their chores.

If you want to be seen as a man, and treated as a man, start acting like one; real men don’t get nagged, because they don’t NEED to be.